Historical society mines Derry area's coal mining past for living history program

Miners, their wives, child laborers and patch town store operators all had a part in the history of coal in the Derry area.

“There were so many mines in this area,” said Donna Showalter, a Derry Area Historical Society board member. “Just about everybody who has lived in this area has coal mining in their family.”

The voices of the miners and community will come to life in a living history program the historical society will present on Sunday.

The free program is set for 1 to 4 p.m. at the Fulton House, a former log inn the society has restored as its headquarters at 357 Pittsburgh St., just off Route 982 in the Derry Township village of New Derry.

Showalter, a Derry Township resident whose grandfather was a miner, has recruited several fellow history buffs to interact with program attendees and portray period figures from coal communities — some typical and some specific. The program will focus on the early 1900s, when mining was fraught with hazards. Visitors will be able to view mining artifacts, including helmets and tall metal lunch pails.

The program will touch on the hard life of “breaker boys,” boys as young as 8 who got their start in the mines by manually separating chunks of mined coal into pieces and from waste material during long shifts.

“They weren’t allowed to wear gloves because it interfered with their dexterity, so their hands got real red,” until their skin became toughened, Showalter said.

The typical miner’s lunch pail consisted of a tall stack of compartments holding different food items.

According to one tradition about recruiting young mine employees, Showalter said, “You would stand holding a pail, and if it didn’t touch the ground, you were big enough that you could work in the mine.”

The program also will reveal the desperate situation many wives in mining towns could find themselves in if their husband died and they had no other sufficient source of income.

“For a coal miner’s wife, one of her big fears was that her husband was going to be killed in the mine,” Showalter said. “If you couldn’t pay the rent, the mining company would tell you to get out.”

To avoid eviction, she said, “The widow would have to marry again, maybe to another miner who needed someone to wash and make meals.”

Showalter has drawn upon several reference works to flesh out the personas featured in the program. An important source was a collection of period accounts of Derry Township coal mining incidents compiled by late local historian Ray Washlaski.

Violent history

Linda McDowell of Latrobe, a former docent at the Compass Inn Museum in Laughlintown, has been studying several pages in Washlaski’s volume as she prepares to portray 20-year-old Anna Panizzi, one of the survivors of a November 1914 explosion that destroyed the Panizzi family’s general store and home in the Derry Township mining community of Superior.

The building was blown up by set charges of dynamite that contemporary accounts suggested were the work of the Black Hand, a criminal organization that sought to extort money from wealthy people to prevent violent attacks against them.

While other members of the family escaped, Anna Panizzi lost three younger brothers in the flaming ruins of the building and two men in a nearby blacksmith shop also were killed.

“I definitely think Anna was a heroine,” McDowell said. “She tried to get her bothers out.

“She got singed. The fire burned off her eyebrows and burned her hair, but she couldn’t get to her brothers.”

Flames spread to five other buildings, according to a contemporary Associated Press story, which noted, “Windows in a radius of two miles of Superior were broken and plaster was knocked from walls five miles away.”

Two men eventually were arrested on charges related to the explosion.

If Sunday’s program is successful, Showalter said, it may be followed by historical presentations on other topics, such as local agriculture.

With Derry Township set to mark the 250th anniversary of its founding next year, she said, “Maybe we can foster interest in some of the local history, by getting some of these stories out.”